Make this food: Breakfast

Grilled cheese with mascarpone, apricots, and chocolate from Not Without Salt

I have never met a grilled cheese sandwich that I didn't like, and the same goes for french toast. So I think odds are good that this grilled cheese sandwich, filled with mascarpone, stewed apricots, and chocolate, and supported with challah french toast, might be the greatest thing that has ever happened to my breakfast.

Passover begins this Friday night and with it comes eight days of not eating delicious sandwiches like this one. I've never made it more than a couple of days bread-free, but this year I am determined (more on that later). I will tuck this recipe away and in two weeks from now I will be eating it for breakfast. In the meantime, I think you ought to try this out and report back to me.

Where do you find your best breakfast recipes? You do eat breakfast, right? I'm a firm believer in first and second breakfast, so I'm always looking for ideas.

Photo by Ashley Rodriguez

When not looking for a job

The past few days have felt all-consuming, but really, they wasn't that much going on. Sometimes it feels as though not having a job is a lot of work. I feel as though I ought to be looking for work every second of the day, and since of course I'm not looking for work every second, I am very busy feeling very guilty that I'm not. You following me? Me neither, so yesterday afternoon I went to see a movie. By myself. To cope. Anyway, besides looking for work, my days are filled with the usual things. Like bathing Pomegranate because there was poop stuck to his tail. 

It is indeed a glamorous life.  Pomegranate really needs some professional grooming (Pomegranate, besides sometimes being a bit of a jerk, is also a lazy groomer. A sweet, lazy groomer), but cat grooming is not currently in our budget. He was a good sport about it, and had the full moral support of Hille, who is in love with him. Hille does indeed have a head, but he's too busy trying to lick Pomegranate to worry about camera time.

There was of course more dress-up. This Cinderella costume is her favourite, but it's a bit scratchy and not made of niece material. I'm planning on asking a friend's mother to make a new one for Halloween. Halloween is still a couple of months away, but we're already planning. Alyce will be a princess, I will be a princess, Matt will be a King, and last I heard Shira will be a bee. At least this is what Alyce declared this week. (Liz, if you're reading this, I think that toy in Alyce's mouth is something she swiped from camp this weekend. Sorry about that).

And there was colouring. A lot of colouring. I love watching Shira try so hard to be like her sister. I think she enjoys colouring in her own right, but there is nothing she loves more than to park herself near Alyce in a full-on colouring session. Shira spends a lot of time drawing on herself with markers, and often loses the caps, but most of the time Alyce is happy to have a craft partner, and I foresee years of Alyce passing down her crafty secrets to an eager Shira. Sometimes it will seem more like she's just being bossy, but I like to consider it more in the line of transmitting secret knowledge. Alyce just transmits loudly and firmly.

Wouldn't you like to join with some colouring? We have lots of projects to do this week. Tomorrow is my grandmother's birthday and we'll spend some time making her a card. I also came across these tiny hearts and I'm hoping to make a few over the weekend. There is something so lovely about sending Alyce to school with a little heart in her pocket. Did I mention she starts school next Tuesday? Oh, I'll be mentioning that a lot in the coming week. Because she's GOING TO SCHOOL. What?

Does anyone have a suggestion about things I should do while I'm still unemployed? The only requirement is that it can't cost a lot of money. You know, so we can save for the cat grooming.

Date Night

Just had a date with my husband (can I get an "Amen" for moving closer to babysitters family?), and in an attempt to come up with something very last minute to do, we ended up seeing Crazy, Stupid, Love. We both expected an decent movie, something that wouldn't annoy us too much, and ultimately just allow us to sit for two hours away from our house and The Children. But instead it was just perfect. I love movies that remind me how much I love being married to Matt. It was funny and familiar and complicated and sweet. I think you should see it. 

Yes, this post will fall under the category of "Bossy," but I'll make no apologies. I'm really right about this. Go see it.

Was it a good weekend? Did you relax? Did you eat some delicious food? Do tell.

Sometimes I hoard the internet

I spend, ahem, a lot of time online. I steal little moments from my day when I can find them: nursing, waiting in long lines, standing in the kitchen waiting for water to boil. Maybe this sounds familiar? I know it does to my husband, who I will almost always find standing in the middle of a room, iphone in hand, scanning Twitter or Google Reader for some monumental breakthrough in sports analysis.

Because I'm often accessing these gems of the internet here, there and everywhere, I usually want to keep something for later, when I will have more time to think about a recipe or if I just want to let someone's idea simmer around in my brain for a little while before I read their post again. These are the reasons I'm offering for the fact that all my phone is constantly filled with open tabs and bookmarks, threatening to drown all other data from my phone (I don't actually know if this might happen, but I'm a worrier).

So in an extraordinary act of cleaning house, here are the interesting things that have caught my attention in the last couple of weeks:


A knitting tutorial on how to weave in your ends. As a novice knitter, this is perfect!

This raspberry scone recipe had me at hello.

Kale and honeydew? Yes, please.

A post about restarting your engine when things feel heavy.

It's also good to remind yourself (for the first or tenth time) about some very important lessons.

Sometimes I start nagging myself about my lack of Phd-completing. Then I read this.


Good. I feel a bit lighter now.

Creative Pairing

Shira will learn many things from her big sister. Yesterday was the first time Alyce willingly* shared her crayons with Shira, though I'm sure if you lean in close enough you'll hear Alyce complaining that she's doing it wrong.

*I might define willingly differently than you do. It's a personal choice.

An awfully big Monday

Here is my Monday to-do list for today:

• get rid of nasty head cold that appeared out of nowhere
• nurse Shira, suffering from same head cold, back to health
• sell some furniture on craigslist
• pack up some of the kitchen and the toys
• tackle that pile of paperwork that is threatening to smother us in our sleep
• have a really long nap

So that last one might not happen, but I am determined to be in bed by 8:30 tonight. I was out late last night, partying as usual (ok, so I went on a movie date with a friend. Bridesmaids is fabulous and you should probably go see it tonight) and now I'm dragging myself around this to-do list. 

There is an unbelievable amount of things to do before Thursday, when we will pack all these boxes and bits and pieces into a moving truck. And of course because I'm like this, I still have some working hanging over my head that needs to be finished before we go. Whenever things get crazy like this I just want to sit down and knit. But instead, I will need to power through and get all this done.

Have I mentioned that Alyce is in daycare this week? (Yay!)

Any good packing strategies?

Facebook is a boob

I am so very tired of hearing about another instance of Facebook deleting photos of mothers breastfeeding. This is so, so old, Facebook. There is a great discussion going on about Facebook's recent jackassery here (thanks Sierra Black at Strollerberby for pointing this out). Breastfeeding in public is protected across North America (and elsewhere), but Facebook gets the willies when it catches a documented glimpse of a baby's lunch on its site.

Babies need to eat. A lot. Many babies eat by breastfeeding. Breastfeeding involves breasts. End of story, or at least, it should be. There is just no other way to talk about this. Are some people offended? Well, they shouldn't be. And if they are, that's not my problem. And if I want to share a photo of myself breastfeeding my baby on Facebook, why is anyone wasting their precious time worrying about it?

I nurse about 5,928 times a day*. This is part of who I am right now. And Shira is very grateful for it. Does this give you the willies? Then you need to get out more.

*Maybe not this much.

Room

I don't want to be bossy or anything (because that would be so outside of character for me), but you should all go out today, find a copy of the book Room, and then empty your calendar for a day or two. You won't regret it.
 
I started the book about a month ago and then put it down (silly me). I found it hard to get used to the narrator's five-year-old voice and I thought it might get in the way of the story. I was very, very wrong. Once I finally picked it back up (with thanks to my new favourite toy) I devoured the rest of the book in two days. The book tells the story of a young woman, kidnapped at nineteen, and her son, born in captivity. And the incredible thing about the book (well, one of them) is that the kidnapper plays virtually no role in the story. I repeat: this is not a gruesome "let's describe every violation imaginable that we can do to women and children" story (I'm looking at you, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Instead this is a story about a little boy who loves his Ma and the world she is able to create for him. You know how you sometimes hear those stories about mothers who lift cars off the ground or fight tigers in order to save their children? It's that kind of story.

Ok, get moving. And then can you come back and tell me what you thought of the book?

Image found here.